Amazon has spent the past six years parlaying its users’ product browsing and purchase data into an advertising business that many consider having the potential to rival Google, Facebook and Yahoo for brands’ digital dollars. Amazon has kept the shades drawn on how ads contribute to the e-commerce company’s bottom line, but research firm eMarketer has a compiled a peek.
Amazon’s global advertising revenue rose by 45.5% last year to top $609.9 million, according to estimates released on Tuesday. EMarketer said ads tied to Amazon.com search results make up the majority of its ad revenue with display ads running on Amazon-owned sites like IMDb.com and Zappos.com contributing a substantial remainder.
“They have built a business that’s growing relatively quickly compared to the overall market and, should that growth continue on the same trajectory, Amazon stands to be a regular player in the budgets of many major marketers,” said eMarketer’s VP-communications Clark Fredricksen.
EMarketer isn’t the first firm to estimate Amazon’s ad revenues and took into account several other companies’ projections in calculating its figures, specifically citing Barclays’ $550 million estimate for revenue in 2012 from global advertising and co-branded credit cards and Jefferies’ $235 million estimate.
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To get an idea of how Amazon’s ad business compares with some of today’s biggest players, here are the full-year 2012 ad revenues for Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL and Twitter:
Date: June 04, 2013